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Games All Downhill Since Pong?
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Oct 22, 2007 10:33 PM
from the you-kids-get-off-my-lawn dept.
from the you-kids-get-off-my-lawn dept.
In a recent article Nolan Bushnell laments the current state of gaming, stating that modern games are nothing more than a "race to the bottom" resulting in complete and utter trash. In order to combat what he sees as the downward spiral in game quality he continues to work on his new dining experience uWink that features tabletop games and a "reasonably priced meal". RPS weighs in on the subject arguing that, while the unhealthy obsession with Halo 3 might be a bit misplaced, there are plenty of gems to be found amidst the flotsam and jetsam.
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One Word: Portal. (Score:5, Funny)
I'm making a note here:
HUGE SUCCESS!
Aperture Science (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
you just keep on trying till you run out of cake.
Re:Aperture Science (Score:4, Informative)
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Two Words: Narbacular Drop. (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narbacular_Drop [wikipedia.org]
The predecessor to Portal (Portal was written by the ND guys, Valve hired them on the spot), with all the community-created levels, has the awesome problem-solving puzzle elements of Portal without the Valve graphics. It took a couple students from DigiPen to create the unique concept that was Portal, not some internal Valve guys. I'm glad that a company with the popularity/graphics expertise of Valve could bring it to a wider audience and make it more acceptable to the general gaming public.
Just FAYI.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, Valve hired Chet [valvesoftware.com] and Erik [wikipedia.org] of the hilarious and much-missed Old Man Murray [oldmanmurray.com] (remember them?) to do the writing for Portal, and it shows.
No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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And I certainly think Nolan misses the point when calling all games these days crap. Lots of gamers would agree that Halo 3 is a great game, but not on the same level as the hype surrounding it. But in some ways Halo (the entire series) has had a role in growing the gamer population. It wasn't the first to have multiplayer gaming by a long shot, but the ease of the multiplayer scenario was pr
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Nolan compares himself to Disney. He created Chuck E. Cheese. He bemoans the way people don't socialize the way they used to, and how men don't buy board games anymore.
Clearly, to someone like Nolan, a game like Portal is a bad game, because the better it is at being what it tries to be, the more it disinclines you to connect to other human beings.
Those who disagree with him point out all the social aspects of onlin
Re:No. (Score:4, Informative)
You're right, brand and tech don't make a great game. However, fun, innovative and original gameplay that tests your intellect as much as your reaction speed, a surprisingly captivating story that had me hooked and wouldn't let go, a twisted sense of humor (I don't remember the last time I laughed that much at a game. The computer voice that guides you along is hilarious, and I was laughing at it almost the entire time I was playing), and an all-around high amount of polish do make a great game. Portal may be short (it only takes a few hours to beat), but it was the most refreshing, entertaining few hours of gaming I've experience in a long, long time.
There are a lot of great games that have come out this year and there are even more great games scheduled to come out by the end of the year. No doubt, the second half of 2007 is looking like one of the best times PC gaming (and gaming in general) has seen in years. Even still, I would rank Portal as a more fun experience than any of the other games I've played this year so far, and I'm skeptical that anything coming down the pipe will top that first play-through of Portal for sheer enjoyment factor. After I'd finished the game's story mode, I was stuck on a Portal high for days. It was the same kind of high I get after finishing a really good book for the first time, and that's simply something no other game has done to me.
You call it a tech gimmick fad, but that just tells me that you've missed the point of the game entirely. For me (and nearly everyone else I've talked to who's played the game), it's on track to be my game of the year, if not game of the decade. It seems like the only reason it hasn't been getting 10/10 scores in professional reviews is because of its length, but it was such a fun experience for the few hours it lasted that I'm willing to overlook that.
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Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
See, that's the thing: we don't evaluate games on the potential for sequels. We evaluate them on how much we enjoy playing the game itself, and for how long they stay enjoyable. I guess.that's why we're not in marketing.
Personally, I was never a huge fan of Pong, but Aquanoid and the like are essentially Pong and I found them great fun. I think Tetris may have them all beat, though.
Parent
Hmm, OK... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Civilization. XCOM. MOO1&2. Wing Commander. Railroad Tycoon. Harpoon. Steel Panthers. Master of Magic.
I just find it endlessly frustrating that The Powers That Be are trying so hard to kill PC gaming; the only things being released these days are Real Time Strategy (RTS games are NOT strategy games, developers; I love strategy games) & FPS; I like FPS's but consoles will always be be
Re:Hmm, OK... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Hmm, OK... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Hmm, OK... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Hmm, OK... (Score:5, Funny)
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Feh (Score:5, Funny)
I Completely Agree... (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps it's just a generation thing... you love the games you were brought up with... I'm sure that there are plenty of people who feel that games have gone downhill ever since they started using "advanced" graphics (tiles, images, etc... the stuff you see with Zelda, Donkey Kong, Mario, etc... for the SNES and NES), as opposed to a ball and some paddles...
Re:I Completely Agree... (Score:5, Interesting)
I watch my son playing Final Fantasy on his PS2 and the ridiculous complexity of weapons, healing potions, tactics, characters and maps just takes away any possibility of me just enjoying the game or environment.
The only thing I'll play on the kids consoles are the driving games.
For me there would still be great pleasure in Xevious or Tempest.
Parent
Re:I Completely Agree... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure you'd have a great time playing Tempest again. I wouldn't enjoy that game much at all, I'd much rather play Age of Empire 3 or Battlefield 2142 or Halo 3. To me those are good games (well, Battlefield loses points for it's awful DRM lagging my computer for 10 minutes after I close it...) and the 'classic' games I nostagize about are Battlefield 1942 and Star Trek Armada 2 (which I still play). Simplicity is probably a great thing in a game, if you grew up with simplicity.
As Douglas Adams once said, "Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things." That's really what this article is all about, modern games are against the natural order of gaming for those who grew up with Pong-generation games. To those of us who grew up with modern games they're normal and ordinary and the older games are boring.
Parent
Re:I Completely Agree... (Score:4, Interesting)
You'll notice I have a wide variety of interest in games, I think I've covered: casual gaming, first person shooters, role playing games (massively multiplayer, multiplayer and single player), strategy (real time and turn based), side scrollers, sports titles, sims and god games.
I've mentioned quite a few cream of the crop and a number of first person shooters (I nearly went professional in Quake3 and UT.) I have enjoyed all of these games and it really is a preference to the individual player. My wife: a definite casual gamer. Me? can't you tell... addicted gamer. I can easily go back and enjoy the classics as well as enjoy the new shiny. I've learned I'm no good at real-time strategy... not that good at turn-based either, but I have fun with it. Also, give Valve credit, they're doing their best at putting a decent story into first person shooters. I highly recommend an Orange Box purchase.
My point to this post is that each person has their favorite. There is no right answer to the "Best" game. To say Pong was the only decent game
Just finished playing: Oblivion, Half-Life 2 eps 1-2 (twice), Portal (this will be awesome in multiplayer)
Currently playing: Civilization 3 (with a friend), Civilization 4 (learning the game, getting ready for multiplay), kMoria (I'm finally figuring out this game), Text Twist (great on the laptop), Team Fortress 2, Never-Winter Nights (multiplay)
Will/Want to play: Need a good flight sim, a better Need for Speed game (why can't we crunch cars real good, GPUs are good enough), a good strategy game and first person shooter that utilizes dual monitors.
/ Ah! How could I have forgotten Oregon Trail and another Apple IIe classic: Montezuma's Revenge. Or, even the classic Blue Disks for the IBM PC (and compatibles).
Parent
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anyway, the trend is tons more time having to be spent on art and design and skinning and textures and cutsecenes and Feng Shuing the map and whatever the hell else they waste time on these days. And that leaves a tiny budget and no time for a
Self-projecting much? (Score:4, Interesting)
Wii (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed (Score:5, Interesting)
But that was before a few weekends ago, when the S.O. and I were at a friend's house and saw Wii Sports in person for the first time. I'd heard of it, of course, but had never really played it. Overall, I'm not sure it'll go down in the annals of videogames as more significant than Super Mario Brothers, but maybe it should: I saw more non-gamers pick up and have a good time with that game than I've ever seen before, on any system. Lots of people who normally would have just tuned it out as annoying background noise ended up taking a turn. And perhaps more significantly, we weren't the only couple leaving that night and saying "wow, we have got to get one of those" to each other. It's a video game system that doesn't feel like a 'video game' system -- it felt like poor-man's virtual reality. And a week later, despite living with one of the most anti-video-game people I know (and at their insistence, no less), I found myself rearranging the living room furniture so that there's more room to play Wii Tennis.
As far as I'm concerned, Nintendo should let Sony and Microsoft fight over the established market: they're creating a whole new one, or at least bringing a lot of people whose last console system was an NES back into it. The major question for them is whether they're going to be able to continue to produce games that maintain the very high bar for playability and group fun that Wii Sports does (so far, most of the third-party titles we've picked up from Blockbuster have been a bit disappointing). The question of whether the Wiimote is revolutionary or just a novelty will ultimately depend on whether they can get more games that use it effectively and intuitively, instead of just using it to emulate traditional controls or as an addon, rather than the platform's core and distinguishing feature. At least in my opinion, if you play it sitting down, somebody missed the point.
I've played Halo 3, and yes, the graphics are pretty amazing (it's probably the first game I've played where the flamethrower looked borderline convincing). I suspect, based on the hardware, that the Playstation's are even more impressive. But there's nothing there that makes we want to run out and drop half a grand. (When they're selling for $100, I'll buy an XBox3 so I can play through Halo for the plot.)
Wii Sports (and the ensuing sore arm) was pretty much worth $250, just for the sake of watching people whose knee-jerk response to any console system is "I don't do video games" change their minds and start to enjoy themselves within a few seconds of handling the controller.
Games are not dead. I think that the game publishers and the hardware developers just went though a very risk-averse phase where nobody wanted to take chances, and so they ground out basically the same product, to the same audience, over and over. If you liked that product and its evolutionary improvements, it was great. But if you didn't, there could be pretty long dry spells. I'm not sure whether the Wii is the beginning of something different, or just a temporary oasis, but you'd have to be an idiot not to enjoy it either way.
Parent
Zero risk committee thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
IMHO, that's the reason why games today for the most part suck.
Games these days are multimillion dollar affairs. And that's even before the movie is released. [wikipedia.org] There is so much money at stake that no sane person would ever risk making a game without a market study and focus groups. Large projects demand it.
And that's the problem - innovation gets lost in that process. Put another way, innovation isn't safe.
Back In The Day(tm), it was just a couple of guys sitting around thinking up wacky ideas. Sometimes they stuck, and sometimes they didn't. If it failed, who cares? It's just a half a dozen guys that are already on the payroll. But if it worked, you could get innovation - and that made the difference. That's why guys my age sit around playing MAME and not giving a crap about Madden 07. How different could is possibly be from Madden 06?
Nolan is a product of the Golden Age. That's why he's disappointed with today's games. Innovation was the thing back then. A half a dozen mad mavericks could easily turn the world upside down with a really great idea.
Sadly, not possible today. That's why despite all the beautifully rendered cut scenes, bazillions of vertexes per second and obscene piles of money thrown at new titles these days the games are just simply missing that magic spark. And just plain fall flat for guys from our time.
Re:Zero risk committee thinking (Score:5, Interesting)
Games these days are multimillion dollar affairs. And that's even before the movie is released. There is so much money at stake that no sane person would ever risk making a game without a market study and focus groups. Large projects demand it.
And that's the problem - innovation gets lost in that process. Put another way, innovation isn't safe.
Back In The Day(tm), it was just a couple of guys sitting around thinking up wacky ideas. Sometimes they stuck, and sometimes they didn't. If it failed, who cares? It's just a half a dozen guys that are already on the payroll. But if it worked, you could get innovation - and that made the difference. That's why guys my age sit around playing MAME and not giving a crap about Madden 07. How different could is possibly be from Madden 06?
Nolan is a product of the Golden Age. That's why he's disappointed with today's games. Innovation was the thing back then. A half a dozen mad mavericks could easily turn the world upside down with a really great idea.
Sadly, not possible today. That's why despite all the beautifully rendered cut scenes, bazillions of vertexes per second and obscene piles of money thrown at new titles these days the games are just simply missing that magic spark. And just plain fall flat for guys from our time.
Indie != Good. Innovative != good. Small != Good. Generally it's nostalgia clouding your judgment. You look back and remember xcom, pacman, supermario, rygar, etc.. and forgot all the dreck. There was always derivative dreck, innovation usually sucked, and golden ages are more about you then what ever you are reminiscing about. Nolan was part of the original video game collapse. It was partly his fault for letting the really dumb people run Atari.
A good idea getting to a good organization can still make a good game. KOTOR, BioShock, FFXII, Halo, Warcraft 3, Disgea, etc.. were all non too original games that achieved success by doing it right and fun. Even now small developers can still make games. IF you criteria is that a good idea ought to be enough then the newest gen of consoles will fit your bill. Wii is intrinsically cheaper to develop for and the PS3 and 360 all have smaller scale downloadable games. Try Flow, theres just an idea, one guy, and a ton of oddly addictive fun. Try any of the XNA titles, try Most DS game. This is the true golden age.
Parent
One way to look at it... (Score:3, Interesting)
ping pong
chess
tennis
sudoko, ect
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he forgot tetris (Score:5, Interesting)
Get off my lawn!.. dang kids.. no respect... (Score:5, Funny)
New things are not as good as the old stuff back when they weren't as degenerate.
"reasonably priced meals"
Old fashioned entertainment
Isn't this all a little stereotypical Old Fart? i'm waiting for him to start talking about how good 70's cars were compared to today and what great artists "the Captain and tennille" were.
Adjusting for inflation (Score:4, Interesting)
The relatively high price of the 2600 kept the user base pretty small. We all played them, but I bet most of us went to neighbor kids house to do it. Of course, with the video game crash 1983, a massive console glut was created....so maybe everybody's parents bought them after the crash.
Can't agree (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in the good old days? There were fantastic, innovative, fun games, and there was also immense quantities of absolute garbage.
And now? There are fantastic, innovative, fun games, and there is also immense quantities of absolute garbage.
Any claim that games were "better" in the old days is just so much nostalgia and selective memory. Think a bit harder, you'll remember those games you pirated on the C64 that were so bad that you'd spend 2 minutes waiting for the game to load and then only 30 seconds playing it before you tossed the tape back in the case.
What's the proposed alternative... uWink? PASS. (Score:5, Interesting)
Ever been to uWink, his latest idea? It's godawful. Imagine the most tired, re-tread, uninspired, and dull fare you could get from the unholy collision of an Applebees, California Pizza Kitchen, and PF Chang's. The hook? You get to use a touch screen to order your food! Wow, touch screens! You know, like you use at the airport, your ATM, the occasional gas station, and about 500,000 other places. Plus they've got incredibly dull table games... Oh, and for kicks, the touch sensors on the screen are so comically inaccurate -- so make sure to double check that you're getting what you've ordered.
The decor is kind of like chromey mid-90s meets that bar in Star Trek 3, only people look like they're having a lot less fun. Basically, imagine any "futuristic" concept hacked out by any of a dozen subpar ad agencies or architecture firms around 1997. The Century City food court is 10x more self-consciously "futuristic" in its design and seems less ridiculous.
And the last bit of fun: Anything that's actually edible on the menu will be sold out. Ditto for any beers worth drinking. So enjoy that exotic pepperoni pizza and bud light...
Nope, sorry, give me Mario Kart, Guitar Hero, GTA, Final Fantasy 4, Katamari Damacy, Civilization, X-Com, Star Control, or any other of about six dozen games that are brilliant or brilliantly fun. If I wanted to go someplace and be bored while surrounded by awful overpriced food and where touch screens pass as a killer app, I'd hang out at the airport.
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He's just trolling (Score:4, Insightful)
Come on, the company he founded was a great contributor to the videogame crash. The crash happened many years ago, and a phenomemon like that hasn't repeated ever since; not because there are huge budgets or people buy crap, but because there are very good games in the market. There are games with charismatic characters (Mario), cinematic experiences (Goldeneye, Metal Gear Solid), inmersive worlds (Oblivion, Zelda, Half-Life), or plain-ol fun (Wii Sports, Mario Kart, DDR, Guitar Hero, Metal Slug).
Maybe he is ranting against american game publishers like EA, Activision, that like to market the same crap season after season, giving no more entertaining value. Maybe he is too old and don't play complex games. But that is no excuse, because there are also really good indie (or indie like) games, like Every Extend, Geometry Wars, Bejeweled, Clubhouse Games, Pac Mac CE. Games that are WAY more fun than the late 70s titles.
I also been thinking that maybe he doesn't really like videogames, but he likes to make them. It has always happened, just read some interviews to game developers and they'll tell you they don't really play games. Maybe he liked the old games, closer to the heart of the beginnings of videogaming, he was a protagonist in the revolution. Right now, there is nothing, in gaming, that makes him PASSIONATE because he FEELS there hasn't been a real Paradigm Shift(TM) in the way games are made or people interact with them. I hope he is trying to say what I have just written, but the interview is very poorly done to draw any conclusions.
I only have one message to him: Mr. Bushnell, thank you, you're work has made a great impact in our lives, in ways that no one can imagine. I'm glad you are still an active innovator, I love your restaurant idea, but don't treat the gaming industry like that, please look at Wii Sports and Wii Fit and you'll really see gaming is changing for the great benefit of our glorious nation.
Hey, remember that one film? (Score:5, Insightful)
4 s! (Score:3, Interesting)
Nag nag nag (Score:3, Insightful)
There's always been plenty of dross... (Score:3, Insightful)
Final Fantasy 10 and FEAR, system/time (Score:4, Informative)
First, it depends on what you're looking for in a game - if you want a great story, but you've only ever played sports games and never picked up an RPG, you can't at all say that all new games suck if you aren't even looking enough or at all in the right genre.
Just because when you bought whatever console you bought (or if you bought into PC gaming) happened to have shitty games the majority of its life span (or entire life span) doesn't mean that _ALL_ new games suck. Some consoles are better for certain game genres than others. Personally, I suggest a PS2 - sports, shooters, RPG's, and a few puzzle/party games here and there. If the only thing you want is party games, go with something from Nintendo. If you like chatting with other people (read: squeaky 14 year olds) and playing games online, get an Xbox.
As a note on the 2 games I listed, if you disagree, in Final Fantasy 10, go talk the "Maechen" (the old scholar researching the world) in every area throughout the game and see why certain parties in the game are extremely hypocritical. As for FEAR, pick up every answering machine and laptop intel you can to help understand just how sick the plot is. That or just have somebody who's done that spoil it for you...
Confusion (Score:3, Insightful)
While the odds of getting a good game through picking one at random is diminishing quickly, the number of good games is still constant (or rising). You just have to be more picky.
Re:Q2 LMCTF was the high point for me. (Score:4, Interesting)
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